Twitter Rolling Out In-Stream Video Ads

Twitter is introducing in-stream video ads that will run in content created by Twitter’s partners, including TV networks, sports leagues and news outlets.

Video has become a much bigger part of Twitter’s ad revenue base, and the new video ads will be more familiar to marketers that run commercials on television.

The new in-stream ads include both pre-roll and mid-roll ads.

The ads appear in Twitter’s premium content offerings, which are promoted on the social site.

“In recent experiments, we've been automatically promoting videos with high engagement from select publishers. Not only does this drive more views for the publisher, it also allows advertisers to get their message in front of a larger target audience. We have seen early success in the US and look forward to rolling this out more widely in the year ahead,” said Mo Al Adham, senior product manager, revenue, at Twitter in a blog post.

Twitter has done brand effectiveness studies with Nielsen and found that people who saw video ads on Twitter were 50% more likely to be aware of the advertiser’s brand, felt 14% more favorable about the brand, and had 18% higher purchase intent, compared to those who had not seen the ad, Al Adham said.

“As a company, we are making video experiences even better for consumers, publishers, and advertisers. We are investing in the video viewing experience through updates to our platform, content development, and video ad solutions,” Al Adham said, adding that more information and more of its plans for the ad market will come in Twitter’s NewFront presentation on May. 1.